Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

Ebrima’s heart had stopped.

The officer had nodded. Freed slaves were rare, but by no means unknown. ‘Fine,’ he had said. He had looked at Ebrima and said: ‘Name?’

It had all been very quick, and when it was over, Ebrima still was not sure where he stood. Barney had not congratulated him on being freed, and Carlos had not acted like a man who has given a great gift. Clearly Ebrima was to be treated as a free man in the army, but how real was it?

Was he free or not?

He did not know.

Margery’s wedding was postponed.

After the fall of Calais, England expected to be invaded, and Bart Shiring was deputed to raise a hundred men-at-arms and garrison Combe Harbour. The wedding would have to wait.

For Ned Willard, postponement was hope.

Towns such as Kingsbridge were hastily repairing their walls, and earls reinforcing their castles. Ports scraped the rust off the ancient cannons on their sea fronts, and demanded that the local nobility do their duty and defend the population against the dreaded French.

People blamed Queen Mary Tudor. It was all her fault, for marrying the king of Spain. Were it not for him Calais would still be English, England would not be at war with France, and there would be no need for city walls and waterfront cannons.

Ned was glad. While Margery and Bart remained unmarried, anything could happen: Bart could change his mind, or be killed in battle, or die of the shivering fever that was sweeping the country.

Margery was the woman Ned wanted, and that was that. The world was full of attractive girls, but none of them counted: she was the one. He did not really understand why he was so sure. He just knew that Margery would always be there, like the cathedral.

He regarded her engagement as a setback, not a defeat.

Bart and his squadron mustered in Kingsbridge to travel by barge to Combe Harbour on the Saturday before Holy Week. That morning, a crowd gathered at the river to cheer the men off. Ned joined them. He wanted to be sure that Bart really went.

It was cold but sunny, and the waterfront looked festive. Downstream of Merthin’s Bridge, boats and barges were moored on both banks and all around Leper Island. On the far side, in the suburb of Loversfield, warehouses and workshops jostled for space. From Kingsbridge the river was navigable, by shallow-draught vessels, all the way to the coast. Kingsbridge had long been one of the biggest market towns in England; now it did business with Europe, too.

A big barge was docking on the near bank when Ned arrived at Slaughterhouse Wharf. This had to be the vessel that would take Bart and his company to Combe Harbour. Twenty men had rowed upriver, assisted by a single sail. Now they rested on their oars while the barge was poled into a berth. The downriver voyage would be easier, even with a hundred passengers.

The Fitzgeralds came down the main street to give an enthusiastic send-off to the man who was set to become their son-in-law. Sir Reginald and Rollo walked side by side, old and new editions of the same tall, thin, self-righteous book; Ned stared at them with hatred and contempt. Margery and Lady Jane were behind them, one small and sexy, one small and mean.

Ned believed that Rollo saw Margery as nothing more than a means to power and prestige. Many men had this attitude to the girls in their family, but in Ned’s eyes it was the opposite of love. If Rollo was fond of his sister, it was no more than the emotion he might have felt towards a horse: he might like it, but he would sell or trade it if necessary.

Sir Reginald was no better. Ned suspected that Lady Jane was not quite so ruthless, but she would always put the interests of the family before the happiness of any individual member, and in the end that led her to the same cruelty.

Ned watched Margery go up to Bart. He was preening, proud to have the prettiest girl in Kingsbridge as his fiancée.

Ned studied her. It almost seemed as if there was a different person wearing the bright coat of Kingsbridge Scarlet and the little hat with the feather. She stood straight and still, and although she was talking to Bart, her face was like that of a statue. Everything about her expressed resolution, not animation. The imp of mischief had vanished.

But no one could change so quickly. That imp must still be inside her somewhere.

He knew she was miserable, and that made him angry as well as sad. He wanted to pick her up and run away with her. At night he elaborated fantasies in which the two of them slipped out of Kingsbridge at dawn and disappeared into the forest. Sometimes they walked to Winchester and got married under false names; or they made their way to London and set up in some business; they even went to Combe Harbour and took ship to Seville. But he could not save her unless she wanted to be saved.

The oarsmen disembarked and went into the nearest tavern, the Slaughterhouse, to quench their thirsts. A passenger got off the barge, and Ned stared at him in surprise. Wrapped in a grubby cloak and carrying a battered leather satchel, the man had the wearily dogged look of the long-distance traveller. It was Ned’s cousin Albin from Calais.

They were the same age, and had become close while Ned was living with Uncle Dick.

Ned hurried to the quay. ‘Albin?’ he said. ‘Is it you?’

Albin replied in French. ‘Ned, at last,’ he said. ‘What a relief.’

‘What happened in Calais? We still haven’t had definite information, even after all this time.’

‘It’s all bad news,’ Albin said. ‘My parents and my sister are dead, and we’ve lost everything. The French crown seized the warehouse and handed over everything to French merchants.’

‘We were afraid of that.’ It was the news the Willards had been dreading for so long, and Ned felt deeply dispirited. He was particularly sad for his mother, who had lost her life’s work. She would be devastated. But Albin had suffered a much greater loss. ‘I’m so sorry about your parents and

They walked up the main street. ‘I managed to escape from the town,’ Albin said. ‘But I had no money, and, anyway, it’s impossible to get passage from France to England now because of the war. That’s why you’ve had no news.’

‘So how did you get here?’

‘First I had to leave France, so I crossed the border into the Netherlands. But I still didn’t have the fare to England. So I had to get to our uncle in Antwerp.’

Ned nodded. ‘Jan Wolman, our fathers’ cousin.’ Jan had visited Calais while Ned was there, so both he and Albin had met him.

‘So I walked to Antwerp.’

‘That’s more than a hundred miles.’

‘And my feet felt every yard. I took a lot of wrong turnings, and I nearly starved to death, but I got there.’

‘Well done. Uncle Jan took you in, no doubt.’

‘He was wonderful. He fed me beef and wine, and Aunt Hennie bandaged my feet. Then Jan bought me passage from Antwerp to Combe Harbour, and a new pair of shoes, and gave me money for the journey.’

‘And here you are.’ They arrived at the door of the Willard house. Ned escorted Albin into the parlour. Alice was sitting at a table placed near the window for light, writing in a ledger. There was a big fire in the grate, and she was wrapped in a fur-lined cloak. No one ever got warm keeping books, she sometimes said. ‘Mother, here’s Albin, arrived from Calais.’

Alice put down her pen. ‘Welcome, Albin.’ She turned back to Ned. ‘Fetch your cousin something to eat and drink.’

Ned went to the kitchen and asked the housekeeper, Janet Fife, to serve wine and cake.

Back in the parlour, Albin told his story. He spoke French, with Ned translating the parts his mother did not understand.

It brought tears to Ned’s eyes. The portly figure of his mother seemed to shrink in the chair as the grim details came out: her brother-in-law dead, with wife and daughter; the warehouse given to a French merchant, with all its contents; strangers living in Dick’s house. ‘Poor Dick,’ Alice said quietly. ‘Poor Dick.’